The Progressives’ Strategies for Social and Government

Reform

Insider/Outsider:

Who were the Progressives?

Age: Most born between 1860 and 1880

Class: Middle-class originsHard workSelf-DisciplineIndividual EthicEducation

Race: Mostly White

Why dissatisfied?Series of economic panics 1870-1890

Labor unrest

Flood of immigrants

Industrialization

Homestead strike, 1892

What’s the solution?“Association”

“Municipal Housekeeping”

“Social Solidarity”

Strengthen the State

Outsiders: “Municipal

Housekeepers”&

Muckrakers

Jane Addams

c. 1885 c. 1900

Founding of Hull House

Established 1889, Chicago

Hull House Growth

Expanding Reforms

• Neighborhood: Play spaces, garbage collection

• City: Child labor, strike mediation

• State: Factory inspection, juvenile court system

• Nation: Children’s Bureau, Workplace safety

Julia Lathrop• 1893: Charities investigator

• Pioneer in “applied sociology”

• Chicago School

• Immigrants’ Protective League

• 1912: First head of federal Children’s Bureau

• Other issues: suffrage

Florence Kelley

• 1893: IL chief factory inspector

• 1899: Nat’l Consumers’ League;Henry Street Settlement

• 1912: Child labor/Children’s Bureau

• Other issues: suffrage, NAACP

Networks Emerge

Organizations:• Chicago School/U Chicago• NY School of Philanthropy• Other settlement houses in Chic/NYC• Immigrants’ Protective League• WTUL (1903)• Children’s Bureau (1912)• NAWSA /NWP

Hull Hous

e

Issues:• Immigrant abuse• Women’s work hours• Child labor/welfare• Public health• Woman suffrage• Peace• Racial Equality

Muckrakers• Ida Tarbell

• Jacob Riis

• Upton Sinclair

Insiders:Theodore Roosevelt

&Woodrow Wilson

Presidential Power

• Reclaiming political power

• Trustbusting

• Consumer protection

• Conservation

Northern Securities Co.

• Railroad trust=public outrage

• Federal antitrust lawsuit

• Trust dissolved, 1904

"Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator who either intended to ruin all his interests or could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.“ TRoosevelt

Coal Strike of 1902

• 100,000 PA union miners

• Owner refuses to negotiate

• TR suspends strike

• First federal interventionin labor strike as arbitrator

Food Safety

1905, Sausage stuffing

•The Jungle, novel, 1906

• Meat Inspection Act

• Pure Food & Drug Act

Woodrow Wilson

1918

• Mixed record as Progressive

• “Triple wall of Privilege”:Tariff, Banks, Trusts

• Federal Reserve Act(1913)

• Federal Trade Commission (1914)

Significance

• Insider & Outsider efforts at every level of society

• Belief in Authority of State

• Broad agenda aimed at transformation of lower and upper classes

Questions?

Rockefeller, 1900: “What a funny little government!”